


(in the end) i'd do it all again

by secretlyhuman



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Soulmate AU, Soulmate-Identifying Timers, but not like a lot of it, most of the characters are only there for like three lines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-18
Updated: 2017-07-18
Packaged: 2018-12-03 23:37:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11542800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secretlyhuman/pseuds/secretlyhuman
Summary: Steve Roger’s timer had gone off when he was seven years old in a Brooklyn back alley. Since then he and Bucky have been fighting to make it work.





	(in the end) i'd do it all again

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from a random Fall Out Boy song but it felt appropriate idk. Also this is the longest thing I've written despite it not actually being that long and it took me like three days so I hope it's okay.
> 
> Also it's mostly accurate to canon up until parts from the winter soldier but I messed around with it after that.
> 
> Thanks for reading x

Steve Roger’s timer had gone off when he was seven years old in a Brooklyn back alley. He was wearing his dad’s watch, a heavy leather reminder of the father he’d lost, so couldn’t see his numbers as they clicked down to zero but somehow he knew when they did, he felt it in his bones. The boy in front of him looked to be a little taller than he was and was looking down at him with concern. He had messy black hair and one of his front teeth had recently fallen out, Steve couldn’t stop himself from staring. 

“Hi. I’m Bucky.” Steve was speechless, slumped on the ground, still staring at the boy. The boy, Bucky, just stared back, visibly uncomfortable at Steve’s muteness.  
“Please something, you’re making me feel real weird about this.” The words tumbled out of Bucky’s mouth and something about them shocked Steve out of his silence.  
“Um, yeah, I’m Steve, sorry.” Bucky had helped him off the ground and the contact of their hands sent a spark through Steve. There was no mistake, at that moment he knew, he had to stay with the dark haired boy. 

They spent the rest of the day together and by sundown their friendship had solidified in the way that friendships of seven year olds do. Even at seven Steve knew his timer was meant to be important, it was meant to help him find his soulmate. But at seven he didn’t really know what being a soulmate meant, and he didn’t see why Bucky couldn’t be his. He didn’t have any friends, really, so just the fact Bucky hadn’t ran when he found skinny Steve Rogers recovering from an asthma attack in an alley meant that clearly he was special. They agreed to meet up the next day and the day after that and that was how it all started.  
…

An older boy had a girl cornered while she looked for an exit and Bucky could already see Steve bristling, ready to go in and help. They’d only known each other for two years but for preteens that was basically an eternity, they knew each other as well as they knew themselves. And what Bucky knew was that Steve was a stubborn little shit who hated bullies and was definitely going to go try and pick a fight with the boy at the edge of the room. 

Later, as he was holding ice to the rapidly forming bruise on the side of Steve’s face, the thought occurred to Bucky that he probably should have tried to stop Steve from picking the fight. He’d lectured Steve after and brought up how Steve always said it would be the last time but he never actually tried to stop him. It was then he realised he liked how Steve stood up for people. A strange fondness for Steve sat at the bottom of his stomach, warm and heavy, maybe this is what his mom talked about when she talked about how being with your soulmate felt. 

(Bucky had never told Steve but that day in the alley his timer had gone off. Steve had never mentioned it though and his mom had told him about unrequited soulmates when he was a boy. The way things were meant he could that they could grow up together, as soulmates, even at age nine he didn’t want to hear Steve reject him.)  
…

Steve knew it wasn’t normal to meet your soulmate before you were ten, so he kept his watch on. He didn’t show anyone the neat row of zeroes, black ink stark on the pale skin. All those years ago he’d run to his mother and asked her what to do and she’d just told him that love would find a way no matter what. The kids in his class all displayed their numbers proudly, days and numbers ticking slowly down and he didn’t want another thing that marked him as different. Bucky kept a tight cuff round his wrist and always had, Steve never really put too much thought into it, he was just happy he wasn’t alone with his hidden numbers. (Secretly he hoped that whoever Bucky reached zero for made him as happy as he could be.)

The other kids didn’t like the way Steve concealed the zeroes away. They thought maybe there was nothing there, someone like him didn’t deserve a soulmate. It wasn’t all the time but it was enough that Bucky heard the rumour too, enough that just once Bucky had actually looked at him with pity. They didn’t speak for three days after the incident because the only thing Steve hated more than bullies was being pitied. He was tired of always feeling lesser than and he thought Bucky didn’t see him that way.

On the third day he’d confronted him. “You know I do actually have a timer, right, so you can stop looking at me like that.” The words were sharp edged, but Bucky could detect the slight crack in Steve’s voice and he was flooded with guilt for ever doubting him. Who wouldn’t want to love Steve Rogers? He’d realised on his tenth birthday that he did, he realised Steve’s number didn’t matter to him. Steve could love anyone he wanted as long as Bucky got to stand by his side.  
“I know, and like you could show me it, if you wanted to.” Bucky wasn’t sure if he wanted to know but he didn’t know what else to say. Maybe Steve covered up his wrist for the same reasons as he did.  
“No, I can’t.” Steve panicked, Bucky wanted to see his number which would just make everything worse. Maybe not having a number was actually a better alternative than the awful zeroes, the reminder that he was unrequited and always would be.  
…

When Steve was twelve Bucky punched a boy who called Steve a fairy and Steve realised he loved him It was the first time Bucky had actually intervened during a fight. He would try and talk Steve out of them and he would patch him up afterwards but he had never actually intervened before.  
“I had him on the ropes, jerk.” The smile crept into the edges of the words as Steve said them.  
“Of course you did, punk.” That was when Steve worked it out, his heart felt full of love for Bucky Barnes. He didn’t know what to say so he just smiled. He loved him and he had since before he even really knew what that was, maybe even since his timer first fell down to zero. It killed him a little to think that one day Bucky would move on and find his soulmate, but really all he wanted was for Bucky to be happy, with or without him. He couldn’t stop smiling at the idea he loved Bucky, it just seemed so good and so right.  
“What are you grinning about, you would have got your ass handed to you without me.” Bucky’s words were serious but he was smiling despite them . He was holding tissue to his knuckles to clean up some grazes and he had freckles from the sun, Steve was reminded of the day they met. Really not much had changed, they were still Bucky and steve, just now he knew why it had always felt so right. Bucky was his soulmate, no matter what, and maybe that was okay.  
…

The basement they were sat in was clean with fading wallpaper, filled with a group of thirteen year olds including Bucky and Steve. It was the birthday party of one of the nicer girls in their grade. She’d invited Bucky because she had something of a crush on him (which, of course, he was completely oblivious to) and she’d invited Steve because otherwise Bucky wouldn’t have come. The group was sat in a lazy circle and had fallen into a game of truth or dare typical of this type of party.  
“Barnes, truth or dare.” One of the more popular boys asked in a clipped tone, not quite understanding why Bucky and Steve were there and looking for a way to embarrass them.  
Bucky paused for a second before confidently saying “Dare.”  
“Show us your timer.” There was a slight gasp in the crowd and Bucky went rigid. He knew his secret would be found out eventually but he really didn’t want it to be public knowledge, didn’t want everyone to have to hear the fact he was unrequited.  
“I don’t want to.”  
“Well, you shouldn’t have picked dare then, chickenshit.” He felt like the whole circle was staring at him apart from Steve who was pointedly not looking. They hadn’t talked about their timers in years, both carrying their own secrets but maybe it was time for him to stop. He felt like he was suffocating. Slowly he held out his arm and undid the clasp of his cuff with shaking fingers revealing the neatly printed row of zeroes. Tears brimmed in his eyes but he blinked them back, crying would only make this worse.  
“Holy shit Barnes, who’s the lucky girl.” The words cut across the room and he remembered that his soulmate should be a girl. That having a soulmate who wasn’t made him a queer and that was just another thing for him to feel ashamed of. He paused for a second, thinking of what to say, how to explain as volume of the group increased.  
“Don’t know, she didn’t want me so I didn’t bother.” It was the best excuse he could think of but saying it felt like there were pins lodged in his throat. He swallowed hard and tried to hide the fact he felt like he was suffocating him in the crowded room. Next to him he felt Steve get up and leave, saying he had a curfew (he did but not for another hour, at least). The world as he knew it was falling apart so he didn’t stop to think about why Steve would lie.  
…

Sarah Rogers had put up with a lot over the years. She’d dealt with Steve when he was sick and patched him up when he got into fights with boys twice his size. She’d listened to every story he told her (most of which had been about Bucky Barnes). So Sarah Rogers felt like she failed when he came home from a birthday party with watery eyes and asked her if she would still love him if he loved a boy. He looked softer than ever, like he was seven again , more her baby than he’d been in years.  
“Steven Grant Rogers, you listen to me.” He tried to hide his jump at her stern tone but she kept on. “ I have heard you talk about that Barnes boy everyday since you were seven years old running under my feet. He makes you as happy as I’ve ever seen you. And you’re my child, I want you to be happy more than anything and if that boy’s the one then I will make my peace with it.” Her eyes bored into him as her words sunk in. It was then Steve started crying in raw, ugly sobs, the combination of discovering he wasn’t really Bucky’s and his mother’s acceptance utterly overwhelming him. 

Over the next few weeks, Sarah recognised that Bucky and Steve still weren’t talking, mainly due to the fact Steve was still miserable. Slowly but surely she dragged the full story out of Steve, how his timer had been on zero since he was seven and how Bucky’s was on zero but his soulmate was some girl. Sarah Rogers looked onto the situation with the clarity of someone who was not thirteen and hormonal and thought to herself that chances were Bucky was just a scared kid. Scared kids lie, in what she suspected might be Bucky’s case lying offered some safety that the truth would not have, especially if, like Steve, Bucky suspected he was unrequited. 

And for a while nothing happened, Steve moped around while Sarah looked on, thanking god everyday for the fact that she wasn’t a teenager anymore. Then one evening, almost three weeks to the day of the party there was an unexpected knock on the door. She opened it to find a bedraggled looking Bucky Barnes on her doorstep. His cuff was hanging a little looser than she’d normally see it and there was a small cut on his face, a smear of blood wiped across his cheekbone. He looked smaller and sadder than she’d ever seen her as he stared at her with liquid eyes. She pulled him into a tight hug and although he tensed for a second before melting into it. Eventually she pulled back, resisting the urge to mother him further.  
“I’ll go get Steve for you.” She’d said it with a knowing smile before walking off leaving Bucky confused on the doorstep.

Bucky had been miserable for three weeks. He didn’t know what to do without Steve, didn’t know how to fill the space left behind. The weeks without him had been bad. He was alone and a target with a line of zeroes and no friends so he’d made a decision. He’d rather come clean and lose Steve on his terms than lose him on a stupid lie. That plan had fallen apart the second he’d seen Mrs Rogers, she was shorter and warmer than his mother and when she’d hugged him he didn’t want it to end. He was still lost in thought when Steve came to the door and sat down on the stoop looking expectantly at Bucky. Before Bucky could speak Steve started to, completely ruining what was left of Bucky’s plan.  
“Look, Buck, I’ve been thinking. I want to be honest because I haven’t and honestly, it’s killing me and I just want what’s best for you but I have to say this, I’m sorr-” The words spilled out of Steve so Bucky interrupted him, predicting what would come next.  
“I get it, my timer stopped for you and your’s is still going. This doesn’t have to change our friendship.” Bucky paused to take a breath and his next words came out as whisper, the crack in his voice evident. “Please don’t say we can’t still be friends. I need you.”  
To the surprise of them a laugh bubbled up and out from Steve’s mouth, a smile breaking across his face. “Oh my god, we’re idiots.” Bucky sat there in stunned silence as Steve wheezed through his laughter. “I was going to tell you the same thing, oh my god, I was going to say I get your soulmate is some random girl but, you were always mine.” As he laughed he fiddled with his watch until it fell onto the ground and Bucky could see the harsh black zeroes that matched his exactly. Soon he was laughing to, the absurdity of it crashing into him like a wave. That’s how Mrs Rogers found them half an hour later, leaning on each other, shaking with silent laughter.  
…

Their first date was at Coney Park on the day Bucky turned fourteen. He’d told his parents he was going with all his friends but really he just wanted to spend time with Steve. It didn’t feel that different to all the other times Bucky and Steve had gone to Coney Park but now there was a warmth present between them that hadn’t been there all the times that had gone before. Although it did feel somewhat bittersweet. They knew what they meant to each other and had adjusted to it ever since the day their counters hit zero but the rest of the city wasn’t so accommodating. A few of their friends had also met their soulmates and they envied the openness that what were thought of as traditional pairings could share. They couldn’t hold hands or complement each other loud enough for others to hear or even show their timers in fear of what other people would say but they enjoyed the day the best they could.

After the incident on the doorstep Bucky had spent more and more time at the Rogers’ house, Mrs Rogers welcoming him in after working out his parents either didn’t know about the frozen timer or worse yet did and didn’t accept the reality of it. So after venturing round Coney Island they made their way to the Rogers’ house where Mrs Rogers presented a small iced cake with a candle for Bucky to blow out. She and Steve sang him happy birthday and a blush spread across the boys face. After that they’d wandered up to Steve’s room so that Steve could present him with a gift that was messily wrapped in newspaper. The present was a copy of The Great Gatsby, a book that they’d read in english and Bucky had enjoyed. (Steve hadn’t, he thought it was dumb and all the characters were awful. Which was almost entirely the point, Bucky had argued back.)

It was at that point Bucky looked up and realised how pretty Steve really was, now that he was allowed to look properly. He was slight with a mess of blonde hair and high cheekbones. He was staring at Bucky through lashes that cast dark shadows on his pale face and the dark haired boy was utterly captivated.  
“Do you like your book?” There was a slight uncertainty to Steve’s voice that made Bucky blush a little.  
“Course I do, punk.”  
“Least I got you something, jerk.” Without meaning to they’d leant in as they spoke until their faces were inches apart, Bucky could count the freckles dusted across Steve’s nose and the thought made him blush even more. Steve had stilled after his last comment and started chewing nervously on his lower lip. Bucky wondered if he’d crossed a line by leaning in until Steve bridged the gap placing the shortest of kisses onto Bucky’s mouth. He’d jolted back in shock and Steve had looked slightly horrified by his own boldness.  
“Shit, I’m sorry I shouldn’t have done that, I should’ve -” Bucky cut him off by pressing his mouth to Steve’s. It was clumsy and slightly awkward in the way that the first real kiss someone has is but both of them leant into it. For the next hour they sat on Steve’s bed talking and kissing softly. Bucky left Steve’s room slightly more rumpled than when he had entered but happier than he’d ever been.  
...

Bucky’s parents had insisted that he spent his sixteenth birthday with them, which Bucky conceded was reasonable even though he’d rather spend it with the Rogers’. He’d told Steve this before inviting Steve to a meal he declared would be the “most awkward of his life” especially when considering his parents still didn’t know about the stopped timer or any of the rest of it. All this led to Steve standing outside the door of the Barnes household holding a Tupperware full of cookies his mother had provided and another messily wrapped present. (Steve for all his artistic skill could not master the art of making presents not look terrible.) As he stood by the door he heard Mr Barnes’ voice, a low rumbling that got clearer as he got closer. He thought he heard him day “and none of that fairy shit” accompanied by a thump heavier than a step and the thought of what might be happening behind the door made him feel sick to his stomach. The fact anyone thought that they could treat Bucky like that enraged him in a way he previously had not experienced. 

Bucky was right, the meal was awkward, but not because of the timer. What Steve had heard hung heavy in the air, blanketing his normal charm. He wanted to take Bucky home with him and never bring him back to a house where they thought that any of that was okay. Steve loved Bucky with all his heart, he would walk to the end of the world for him and he was going to fix it. He wasn’t sure how yet but he knew he would. 

After the dinner they went up to Bucky’s room, telling his parents they were going to study. Steve was distracted as they lay on his bed lazily kissing.  
“You don’t have to do this you know.” He closed his eyes as he felt Bucky pull back and the pause between his words and the other boys stretched out.  
“Stevie.” Steve felt a hand on his chin gently pulling his face up so he was level with Bucky’s. “Do what.”  
“This. Us. I heard what your dad said at the door and you don’t have to do this, any of this. It would be awful but you could just say your timer went off in a crowd, settle down with a girl whose soul mate didn’t want them, get a house with a white picket fence.” He paused and his next words were barely audible. “I can’t promise you anything like that.”  
“Stevie. Look at me. I don’t care about any of that. About my dad, or some girl, I don’t want that I want you. Always have.” His voice was hoarse as he whispered the words. He was only sixteen but he knew it was true, that he would never want anyone but Steve Rogers.  
“It’s not going to be easy.”  
“The best things aren’t”  
…

Two weeks after Bucky’s birthday Steve finished his plan. He’d talked to Sarah, told her what he’d heard, told her what he wanted and she agreed. She’d had enough time to deal with the fact that her son wouldn’t get the life she’d wanted for him, she just knew he was happy and that was all that was important to her. It was risky and she wasn’t sure how the Barnes family would react but she had to try it, for Steve. So, exactly fourteen days after he turned sixteen, Bucky Barnes moved in with the Rogers

He would stay in Steve’s room, and Sarah said, they could alternate who slept on the floor. (She knew really they would both squeeze into Steve’s old twin bed but she liked to pretend that she didn’t know what they were getting up to.) The Rogers house was small and old, it smelt a bit like damp and the wallpaper was peeling at the edges but it was more of a home to Bucky than the house he’d shared with his parents had ever been .

On that first night he’d at least pretended that he would sleep on the floor but after ten minutes of lying on the hard wooden tiles, staring at the ceiling Steve had pulled him up into his actual bed. He’d winced when Steve had brushed an old bruise on his ribs, something he’d been trying to ignore. It was then that it all hit him, he was safe and he was Steve’s. The blonde boy leant into kiss him before pushing his shirt up and dragging his lips over the discoloured skin. The contact between them felt electric and Bucky thought to himself maybe it was all going to be okay.  
…

Sarah Rogers died on a tuesday and Steve was in class when it happened. She’d promised she’d always be there for him and she’d lied and Steve was just so angry and sad and broken. Bucky didn’t know what to do. The police had gone to the apartment first, found him reading a battered copy of the Great Gatsby and they’d told him. He couldn’t wonder why they wouldn’t try and find Steve. He shouldn’t have known first. When he’d found out the news he’d raced across town to find Steve and tell him. It was a car accident, quick and random. (And Bucky, thought to himself, pointless. Sarah Rogers had deserved something so much goddamn better than something so utterly meaningless.)

Ever since they got home Steve had been crying into the table and Bucky had been next to him. He couldn’t cry, had to strong for Steve, but hell it felt like he’d lost a mother to and it hurt. He didn’t know what to do and for a second he thought he could just ask her and that was when it really struck him. He couldn’t ask her anything ever again. She wouldn’t be there for his next birthday or to watch Steve graduate from art school. It hurt so much and he couldn’t imagine it ever not hurting. 

For a few months after, Steve felt so distant. He didn’t know how to live in a world that didn’t have Sarah Rogers in it. He felt like so selfish as well, Bucky had lost her to but he couldn’t bring himself to comfort him because that meant it was really happening. She was really gone, and she could never come back. He’d never even got to say goodbye. He would never be able to tell her what it meant to him that she’d not cast him out for his queerness or his zeroes. (He would never know that she knew the full extent of his love not only for her but also for Bucky and wherever she was she was hoping Steve wouldn’t drive him away in his grief.) 

In the first two months after Sarah Rogers died they fought more than they ever had before. They were both still children, and they were hurting. They didn’t know how to live without her there, keeping them both in check. Somehow it didn’t drive them apart, they would never quite work out how they didn’t fall apart entirely, hearts aching too much to help each other. Maybe that’s what being soulmates meant, even the things that should have torn them apart didn’t.  
…

When, the war started Steve wanted to fight. He hated bullies and he wanted to help. He just kept getting rejection after rejection and it hurt so damn much. It felt like he was still disappointing his mom, never quite the son she wanted. It didn’t help that Bucky got drafted. They’d never reported their zero timers so he wasn’t exempt from the draft and when he left Steve felt like a piece of himself was getting ripped away. He went to the home that night to empty rooms; he’d never felt less like he belonged. It was like he was twelve again, trapped in a too small body, an easy target with no useful skills. In one last ditch effort he went to the nearest enlistment centre and it was there he met Erskine, a man who would change his life. 

He felt distant again after that, but not in the same way he had after his mother’s death, this time it was more like he couldn’t believe something like this would ever happen to him, he was just waiting for the other shoe to drop. And for a while it didn’t and Steve felt okay. (He missed Bucky like he’d miss a limb but he kept moving and at least he was doing something. He knew if he kept moving then he wouldn’t think of what he wasn’t doing.) 

It was a rain soaked day when the unstable peace of mind he’d built came crashing down. Bucky was missing and they weren’t looking for him. Steve didn’t understand how the Captain could be fine with leaving living men in the hands of the enemy. He had to assume they were alive, it was so much better than the alternative. So he enlisted the friends he’d made. Peggy a woman with her own line of zeroes and a red lipstick smile that made him blush and Howard who had a dark tattoo and a thick watch that kept his numbers hidden. They understood what the bond between soulmates was like, knew he could never just walk away from the fight. So they travelled and they won. 

Suddenly Steve wasn’t just a face for the army he was a soldier, and despite it all he loved it. He got to fight alongside Bucky and other good men. It was what he’d wanted from the second he heard of the war. He built himself a family as the outside world crashed around him. They laughed, drank and told each other stories. When the squad found out about the zeroes they didn’t even care, one of them were was unrequited, another only had a scar left. They were a family and if there was one thing Steve’s mother had taught him it was that families love each other no matter what. (And Steve missed her so much but he could now think back with and focus on what mattered to him not just on her absence.)  
...

They fought for a year, formed the Howling Commandos, the team that was sent in when nothing else would work. It felt like the best year of his life and then it ended. They’d been sent to a train and the mission was going well and then it wasn’t. The train was swaying and Bucky was falling and as he did so did Steve’s heart. He could hear screaming and vaguely recognised that it was his own voice,for a second he felt like that scared boy in the alley, staring up at a boy backlit by the sun.

When he looked at his wrist the next morning the zeroes that had haunted him for so long had faded into an ugly scar. 

It all had to end. Steve had to finish what he started so really landing the plane into the ocean wasn’t that much of a big deal. (And if part of him was only doing it to be with Bucky again then no one else had to know. Peggy told him not to be stupid but this was the surest he’d ever been.)  
…

The world had changed when Steve woke up, his war was over and a new one was beginning. At first he was so disoriented by the change he didn’t think of the scar where his timer used to be but soon he noticed an ache right where it used to be. He rolled up the sleeve of the unfamiliar henley someone had put him in to find a web of scars, like the pattern of a lightning strike twisting in silvery lines around his forearm. Then he saw it, clear as day a new set of numbers slowly ticking down.

...

Somewhere across the world a man was shot. The Winter Soldier felt guilt as he pulled the trigger for the first time in seventy years.  
…

The first months after the ice were the worst of his life. A man called Fury told him that the new scars formed as he took his first breaths in the new world and in all likelihood meant he had a new soulmate, whether he wanted them or not that was his choice to make. He didn’t want them, they could never be Bucky. He still feels sort of bad someone somewhere has a timer counting down to him and they’ll never know what it’s like to have a true soulmate but he can’t help it. All he wants is Bucky, their house in Brooklyn, a white picket fence and a happy life where no one will bother him. What he never wanted was any of this.

He starts fighting again. He’s a good soldier, he does his time. But it’s always there in the back of his mind, the ache for what he had all those years ago in Brooklyn.  
…

As his timer clicks down to zero he’s on a mission. Steve doesn’t care for the numbers, hasn’t told anyone. He’s hidden them away and convinced himself that really they don’t mean anything. Then he sees him standing there.  
“Bucky?” His voice is not much more than a broken whisper, but the other man still hears him.  
“Who the hell is Bucky?” The words are harsh but as he says them Steve has the same feeling in his bones he had all those years ago in a Brooklyn back alley. He sees Bucky’s eyes widen with recognition and he knows maybe they have something like a second chance. He feels more than hears him whisper the word Stevie before turning and running to fast for even Captain America to follow. Him leaving was worse than him being dead, Steve thinks brokenly, at least before Bucky had chosen him.  
…

Somehow all it took to break the Winter Soldier protocol that had filled his head for so many years was Steve saying his name. It would have been funny if it wasn’t so tragic. Like all those years could have been avoided if Steve hadn’t flown a plane into the goddamn ocean for some bullshit self sabotaging reason. Even after all they’d shared, Bucky resented him, he hadn’t lived through all the years after he’d hit the ice, hadn’t seen what Bucky had, hadn’t been through what Bucky had. So he’d ran, it was the only good thing he could do for Steve Rogers. From the day they’d met he’d been letting Steve get into fights and this was one Bucky knew was unwinnable. He thought maybe if he ran then Steve wouldn’t follow.

(He was trying to make all his bad deeds right. If he was going down he wouldn’t bring Steve with him.)

He knew Steve was trying to bring down Hydra, he knew he would probably succeed but he still couldn’t bring himself to go to him. As long as Hydra were still out there him being with Steve put them both at risk and he couldn’t do that. Despite all that had happened since the fall, the year he regained hope for his future was the longest of his life. Before he’d been a glorified robot, just going from one mission to the next but now something better was in sight. The seventy years in the ice hadn’t diminished Steve’s brilliance, in fact, Bucky thought, he may have come out even stronger. 

A year had gone since he’d first seen him and day by day Steve had taken out all of Hydra, one by one. All that was left was Alexander Pierce, even thinking of the man made Bucky’s blood run cold but he knew Steve could never find him alone, but he could. He made a plan, one that would end it all. He could finally get his life back the way it was supposed to be.  
…

It had been a strange day so far for Steve Rogers. He’d received a call from an unknown number and all the man on the other end had said was “Surprise Stevie.” For a second he’d sounded so much like Bucky that Steve’s eyes welled up with all the tears he hadn’t cried after everything. The number had been traced to an house in his old neighbourhood and the more it felt like a sign that Bucky was coming back to him. (He’d been running for a year and Steve wished he would stop so they could just talk one more time but Bucky didn’t want to be found.) In the apartment they’d found Alexander Pierce, the last surviving member of Hydra, lying on the ground with a bullet through his brain. It hit him all so suddenly, it was finally over. It felt like he was breathing again for the first time in seventy years (but the ache that Bucky had left was still there and maybe it always would be.) And for the first time in seventy years he had cried, there on the blood soaked carpet of a dead man’s room.

Something felt different as he approached the front door of his apartment, but he dismissed it, thinking it was just the aftereffects of it all being over. As his front door swung open he saw a shadowy figure draped over his sofa but he couldn’t find it in himself to worry about whoever it was. And then the light hit and Steve realised it was him. He was there, battered and bruised, a smear of blood on one cheek, but he was actually there. And like that he started to cry once more.  
…

It would never be easy, but it would be worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: this had two alternative titles twice (because Steve's timer goes off twice) or not alone, but petrified which is from a twenty one pilots song but neither of themfelt right.
> 
> Also I didn't really make it clear but Bucky's timer was on the arm that was chopped off so he doesn't know about the new countdown and has no idea why the moment has such an effect on him.


End file.
